This paper identifies the unique problems faced by Canadian small market (CSM) franchises in the National Hockey League (NHL). While featuring characteristics similar to other major leagues in North America, CSM franchises are also burdened by currency and taxation issues that favor US-based...

Despite the common perception that African-American coaches face discrimination obstacles, only two rigorous statistical studies exist that actually address the issue of racial variation in retention of coaches. Neither study accounts for variation in the level of talent across coaches and the...

This paper analyzes the changes induced by the newly introduced UCI Pro Tour on the behavior of racing teams. We develop an oligopolistic model starting from the well-known Cournot framework to analyze why the UCI Pro Tour fails to reach its primary aim, namely to increase overall competition...

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Lewis, 2003) is in essence the story of how the Oakland Athletics under its general manager, Billy Beane, have successfully challenged bigmarket rivals such as the New York Yankees in recent years yet have typically spent only around one third of the...

The unwillingness of team owners to share their data prohibits a direct assessment of the value of professional team sports ownership. But insights into that value can be gleaned from actual team sale prices. First, throughout the entire modern history of Major League Baseball (MLB), the average...

Levitt (2004) suggested that sportsbooks do not set prices in the NFL to clear markets, as was commonly assumed, but set prices to maximize profits. This paper uses actual betting data from four sportsbooks to test the Levitt (2004) hypothesis in the NBA. For a sample of the 2004-05 to 2006-07...

There is no bigger event in the world of sports than the quandrennial Summer Olympic Games. In recent years, the competition among cities to host the Games has been as vigorous as that among the athletes themselves. But why would a city wish to take on the financial burden and risk of hosting...

Competitive balance research partitions into two areas: analyzing sports policy and its effect on competitive balance and the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis. This paper examines the latter section. No formal analysis of the relationship between competitive balance and regular season average...

This article examines the effectiveness of auctions as sale procedures of sports rights. Although recent history contains several examples of auctions that have generated substantial revenues to owners of sports rights, staging an auction is no guarantee of success. The amount that bidders are...

Mitchell Ziets is the President an CEO of MZ Sports LLC (http://www.mzsports.com). Over the past 17 years, he has developed and implemented financing plans for a number of sport facilities nationwide. Because of the media scrutiny and controversy that often surround these projects, Ziets...